Lori A. Helman

Relationship Between Language Skills and Acquisition Rate of Sight Words Among English Language Learners

The current study examined the sight word acquisition rate (AR) of 43 second-grade students who were English language learners (ELL) from three diverse, urban schools. The AR was analyzed in relation to each students oral proficiency in English, and examined whether or not children who are ELL but have a higher level of English proficiency would demonstrate larger ARs of English sight-words than children who demonstrate lower levels of English proficiency. The imagery level of the word did not effect the accuracy of reading it and a significant and moderate correlation (r = .63) was found between AR and language proficiency. A significant effect was found among three levels of English proficiency with children in the lowest level of proficiency demonstrating a significantly smaller mean AR than those in the highest and middle group. Potential implications for second-language reading instruction and future research are discussed.

Learning to conduct teacher research: exploring the development of mediated understandings

There is a growing trend in education to advocate for the inclusion of teacher researcher voices in local, state, national and international conversations about classroom teaching and learning. While many scholars agree that teacher researchers can, do, and should make important contributions to the educational research community, much remains to be learned about how teachers learn to engage in quality reflective inquiry. Our goal in this work is to explore instances of one practicing teacher’s opportunities to learn to conduct teacher research. The practicing teacher (pseudonym, Dot) was enrolled in a university seminar that focused on learning to conduct classroom research. For this qualitative investigation we analyzed field notes taken during 13 class sessions across the semester, audiotapes of classroom interactions during class sessions, and artifacts such as written class reflections about course topics and drafts of course assignments. Results revealed that a complex set of significant instances of Dot’s learning about teacher research shaped both what and how she learned. The careful descriptions of Dot’s instances of learning can inform individual instructors about moment‐to‐moment instructional decisions when working with teachers in teacher research courses. Additionally, this work can inform a broader educational community with respect to how classes pertaining to teacher research might be re‐conceptualized to promote systematic research of one’s practice as a ‘way of being’ as a classroom teacher.

Problem Analysis at Tier 2: Using Data to Find the Category of the Problem

The current chapter discusses research regarding methods to focus reading and mathematics interventions at tier 2. A problem analysis model for reading that involves targeting the most fundamental skill is presented in which the student struggles by focusing on the broad categories of comprehension, fluency, decoding, and phonemic awareness. Data from the Path to Reading Excellence in School Sites Project are then presented in which he problem analysis framework was used to target interventions for 175 second- and third-grade students. The data suggested that targeting the intervention based on problem analysis of the four broad areas led to more growth than a comprehensive intervention that was implemented by the school, and more growth than students who were above fall benchmark standards (tier 1). However, these positive results were also dependent on effective grade-level teams to conduct the problem analysis, an easy-to-use data warehouse system, a data manager to facilitate the problem analysis, implementation integrity of the interventions, and quality core instruction.

The Role of Professional Learning Communities in Successful Response to Intervention Implementation

The authors take an in-depth look at the evolution of professional learning communities (PLCs), professional structures in which teachers, administrators, and educational specialists collaborate to understand a problem, propose, and enact new ideas, and analyze the effects of their teaching on student learning. They outline what the research literature says about PLCs’ effectiveness for improving teaching, student learning, and school productivity. They share characteristics of PLCs and how these correspond to goals and structures within a response to intervention (RTI) process. The authors also describe a data-based meeting that merges principles from the PLC and RTI literature, and present examples of schools that are integrating these two currents in school reform. Suggested resources are provided to guide PLC implementation along with recommendations for future research to enhance the role of PLCs in RTI implementation.

Relationship between language proficiency and growth during reading interventions

ABSTRACT Many English language learners (ELLs) experience difficulties with basic English reading due in part to low language proficiency. The authors examined the relationship between English language proficiency and growth during reading interventions for ELLs. A total of 201 second- and third-grade students with a variety of home languages participated. The students were identified as needing a targeted intervention, because scores on the fall oral reading fluency screening measure fell below the benchmark criterion. Thus, all participating students received reading interventions approximately four times each week throughout the school year. Results indicated that those students identified in the lowest English proficiency stage on the Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State (ACCESS) made the highest growth as indicated in the spring benchmark assessment, and the ACCESS score added negligible variance beyond baseline reading skills. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Measuring Spanish orthographic development in private, public and subsidised schools in Chile

The current study has a twofold purpose: first, to determine the reliability of a tool for assessing orthographic development in Spanish; second, to assess differences in students’ performance on the measure across multiple types of primary schools in a large city in Chile. A Spanish developmental spelling inventory that contained words of increasing orthographic difficulty was administered twice to students in first through fifth grades in three types of schools: public, private and partially subsidised. These school types in large part represent varying levels of student socio-economic status because of costs associated with attending them. Results demonstrate that (a) the Spanish spelling inventory is able to reliably measure the development of orthographic knowledge in Spanish, and (b) there is a relationship between school type and student achievement. The authors describe individual cases to highlight the qualitative nature of differential performance for students in greater- or lesser-resourced schools.

Comparison of progress monitoring data from general outcome measures and specific subskill mastery measures for reading

Interventionists often monitor the progress of students receiving supplemental interventions with general outcome measures (GOMs) such as curriculum-based measurement of reading (CBM-R). However, some researchers have suggested that interventionists should collect data more closely related to instructional targets, specific subskill mastery measures (SSMMs) because outcomes from GOMs such as CBM-R may not be sufficiently sensitive to gauge intervention effects. In turn, interventionists may prematurely terminate an effective intervention or continue to deliver an ineffective intervention if they do not monitor student progress with the appropriate measure. However, such recommendations are based upon expert opinion or studies with serious methodological shortcomings. We used multi-variate multilevel modeling to compare pre-intervention intercepts and intervention slopes between GOM and SSMM data collected concurrently in a sample of 96 first, 44 second, and 53 third grade students receiving tier 2 phonics interventions. Statistically significant differences were observed between slopes from SSMM consonant-vowel-consonant words and CBM-R data. Statistically significant differences in slopes were not observed for consonant blend, digraph or consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e (CVCe) SSMMs. Results suggest that using word lists to monitor student response to instruction for early struggling readers is beneficial but as students are exposed to more complex phonetic patterns, the distinction between SSMMs and CBM-R become less meaningful.

Contributions of the Components of Phonemic Awareness to Letter-Sound Knowledge With Kindergarten Students in High-Poverty Urban Elementary Schools

Abstract Phonemic awareness (PA) includes rhyming, phoneme isolation, blending, and segmenting, but the relative importance of each component is unclear, especially for students from high-poverty areas. The current study examined the relationship between components of PA and an early literacy measure among 192 kindergarten students from high-poverty urban elementary schools. A researcher assessed the students using the Quick Phonemic Awareness Assessment and a measure of letter-sound knowledge (LSK). The results showed that PA was highly correlated with LSK. Initial phoneme isolation, blending, and segmenting contributed significant variance to LSK, but rhyming did not. The data supported the Quick Phonemic Awareness Assessment as a measure of PA among an urban population but questioned the importance of rhyming as a predictive component of PA.